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“This place is depraved, I’ll grant you that, Nell.” Her expression softened as it rested on my troubled expression. “That young woman will be better for sharing her horror. Perhaps this incident will cure her of a life of luxurious vice,” she added dryly.
    “That is true,” I agreed, hastening after her out the door with new heart. “One theory about Jack the Ripper was that he sought to discourage women from taking to the streets.”
    “An annuity would have perhaps been more persuasive,” Irene threw over her shoulder. “I am so relieved that you have some acquaintance with the previous work of this monster.”
    It was one of those times when I sensed that Irene’s words were as double-edged as the most lethal of swords, but I could not say why, nor determine who was the recipient of her highly honed instincts, Jack the Ripper, or I.

    Pink had not moved. She might have been the portrait she had resembled when I first saw her.
    Her head lifted as we entered the room, and I realized that our ammonia-scoured nostrils were failing to detect the new odor of the charnel house that clung to our clothing.
    Pink’s face hid in her open hands. “You’ve seen it.”
    “As much as we can make out,” Irene agreed, resuming her former seat.
    “Both of you?” Pink asked incredulously, lifting her eyes from her fingertips like a naughty child peeping through them. They queried me.
    “Both of us,” I said. “It is not necessary to smoke little cigars to face death.”
    “But it is so much more dramatic,” Irene put in, producing one of the objects in question and lighting it. “All of the gentlemen entertaining firing squads do it.”
    Her motion distracted Pink’s attention from me. Really, she was a charming girl, and I could not believe she had been fully corrupted. I sensed of a sudden that Irene’s cigar was masking any unkind odors that clung to us.
    “You are a most dramatic individual, Madam.” Pink regarded Irene almost as intently as Irene was regarding her. “I take it that you and Miss . . . Foxleigh—”
    “Huxleigh,” I hastened to correct.
    “I take it that you both have encountered recently dead people before.”
    “Recently,” Irene agreed, “and not-so-recently dead. Is that not right, Nell?”
    “Only twice,” I said. “I would have been content to leave it at that.”
    “Well,” said Pink, “you two are certainly good scouts about it. I’m sure that I would have not been so upset if only I’d had a chance to go west instead of east, and had seen the frontier life for myself. I apologize, ladies, for acting like such a fading violet.”
    I felt like something of a fading violet myself, now that I had heard the young lady’s Americanisms in full flower. And she still seemed such a placid and well-bred girl for a harlot.
    “I should worry had you not been upset,” Irene said. “But why did you go east instead of west, and how did you end up in the trade you follow?” She sounded as if she were interviewing a dressmaker and not a globe-trotting tart.
    “I was the thirteenth of my father’s fifteen children,” she began.
    “Good heavens,” I cried, “fifteen!”
    She went on as if I had not spoken. “My father died when I was just six, and my mother, who had outlived one husband before him, was eventually forced to take another to avoid utter poverty for herself and the six children she had borne my father. Although my father had been a respected judge, he died without a will, and any assets were scattered among the children. My mother left the marriage with some furniture, the horse and carriage, the cow, and one of the dogs, and you will quickly see that most of her ‘inheritance’ required even more feeding than her six children.”
    “So you plead poverty for your profession,” I suggested in a tone more kindly than critical.
    It was not taken thus. Pink’s hazel eyes darkened with temper. “I plead nothing, and apologize for nothing.” Her gaze